‘Colombia’s is the Rolls Royce of programs. That’s why we’re all here,” says a keen American as we join the rest of the participants boarding the bus that will take us from our hotel to Bogotá’s El Dorado airport from where we will fly 150 miles west to the town of Armenia in Colombia’s coffee region in the hilly center of the country.
Some 60 peacekeepers, academics, generals, and bureaucrats from 20 countries are all congregating in Colombia for a week to inspect its process of Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) of former guerrillas and paramilitaries into civilian society. It’s said to be the envy of other countries trying to extract themselves from civil wars.
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