Ala kachuu

[1] The term can apply to a variety of actions, ranging from a consensual elopement to a non-consensual kidnapping,[2] and to what extent it actually happens is controversial.

[3] Kyz ala kachuu (Kyrgyz: кыз ала качуу) means "to take a young woman and run away".

The typical non-consensual variety involves the young man abducting a woman[4] either by force or by guile, often accompanied by friends or male relatives.

They often take her to his family home, where she is kept in a room until the man's female relatives convince her to put on the scarf of a married woman as a sign of acceptance.

The Russian Empire and later USSR made the ancient practice of the nomads illegal, and so with the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent independence of the Central Asian nations, many have revived old customs as a way of asserting cultural identity.

14% of married women answered that they were kidnapped at the time and that two thirds of these cases were consensual, the woman knew the man and had agreed with it up front.

[20] The matter is somewhat confused by the local use of the term "bride kidnap" to reflect practices along a continuum, from forcible abduction and rape (and then, almost unavoidably, marriage), to something akin to an elopement arranged between the two young people, to which both sets of parents have to consent after the fact.

[21] Aqsaqal courts, tasked with adjudicating family law, property and torts, often fail to take bride kidnapping seriously.

The prospective groom and his male relatives or friends or both abduct the girl (in the old nomadic days, on horseback; now often by car) and take her to the family home.

Once there, the man's relatives may attempt to convince the woman to accept the marriage, and to place a white wedding scarf (jooluk) on her head to symbolize her agreement.

[25] In other models of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan and other areas of Central Asia, the woman may be a complete stranger to the man prior to the abduction.

[27] As in other societies, often the men who resort to bride kidnapping are socially undesirable for a variety of reasons; they may be more likely to be violent, have a criminal history, or to be substance abusers.