Gender Equality in the Bride Kidnapping Capitol of the World

Hillary Clinton may have cracked the glass ceiling, but Central Asian politician Roza Otunbayeva, the newly recognized leader of Kyrgyzstan, broke though.

Following April’s coup, Otunbayeva was officially recognized as the new Kyrgyzstani head of state by the US and other foreign diplomats. A few weeks ago, her predecessor, the deposed president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, left the country.

This was, by all accounts, an important and much-needed transfer of power. But it left us surprised — for a reason that hasn’t received much mention in regular outlets.

It wasn’t that someone beat the US to the punch in selecting a female leader, plenty of other countries have already done that. It was that the US was beaten to the punch by the world capitol of bride-napping, a place where more than half of all marriages began with abduction.

Bride kidnapping in Kyrgystan is a fairly well-documented in phenomenon. In 2005 the New York Times reported that it was by far the most common in the countryside and that some of the kidnappings were at least semi-voluntary, with 80 percent of kidnapped women eventually relenting and accepting their new husbands.

The practice is known as “ala kachuu,” which translates roughly as “grab and run,” writes the Times. It’s been rising steadily over the last 50 years and now comprises about one third of marriages. It accounts for about half of existing marriages.

The video below describes the process and films an actual kidnapping.

So how to explain Roza Otunbayeva? A powerful, respected female leader in a land where courtship sometimes means hiding out in the bushes with rope and a blind fold?