An insurgent bomb maker named Esmatullah from Helmand Province is perhaps still wondering how he came to be in jail for 20 years.
To westerners steeped in police procedural dramas such as CSI, this is no mystery. Esmatullah left his fingerprints on bomb components.
With Afghan forces wholly on their own from the end of this year, the ability to gather trace evidence to prosecute offenders is a developing capability.
RAAF Flight Lieutenant Thomas Holt says improvised explosive devices (IEDs) remain the big killer of members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
His job is co-ordinating counter-IED exploitation for coalition and Afghan security forces, collecting useful evidence from an IED scene.
"That is used to criminally prosecute insurgents in accordance with Afghan law."
Evidence based on fingerprints and DNA can be collected directly from suspects and their homes, from unexploded IEDs and even from the big smoking hole left from an IED blast.
None of this is as familiar to Afghan security forces as it is to westerners.
"We are working with the ANSF to identify that they need to collect evidence to find these people and prosecute them successfully," he said.
"We have methods that work for us. The way of working with Afghans is to encourage them to come up with ideas that work best for them."
As well as evidence for prosecution, collection of bomb data can provide useful intelligence. For example, use of a different type of explosive in a particular area might indicate there's a new bombmaker in town.
Flight Lieutenant Holt said Australian and coalition forces fielded very effective counters to the IED threat.
"A lot of the technology has been developed very specifically for the Afghan theatre and it's very effective," he said.
Afghan forces are definitely better prepared but still need more work, he said. An ongoing challenge relates to overcrowding of vehicles which automatically creates high casualties in an IED strike.
The story of Esmatullah is distributed to Afghan bomb technicians to show there is a point to collecting of evidence.
Then there was the Afghan policeman arrested when he sought to enrol in explosive ordnance disposal school. In 2010 he'd left his marks on a bomb used in the attempted assassination of another police officer.
"Without site exploitation, this man would not have been identified and arrested," the information sheet says.
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