Editor's Note: Wanderlust Is a Regular Globalpost Series on Global Sex and Relationship

Editor's note: Wanderlust is a regular GlobalPost series on global sex and relationship issues written by Iva Skoch, who is now traveling the world writing a book on the subject.

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BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — Munara didn't want to be kidnapped.

Some Kyrgyz girls look forward to the time they get "chosen" by a man, but Munara, 18, already had a boyfriend and hoped to marry him.

"If only my boyfriend managed to kidnap me first," she said.

Six months ago two men stuffed her into an old Lada automobile and drove her to their house.

"I really don't want to be kidnapped. I don't want to get married," she said she screamed at them. "Please let me go," she begged.

They didn't. Few men here take a woman's pleading seriously because girls playing hard-to-get is par-for- the-course during the ritual of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, the mountainous Central Asian country that has suffered brutal inter-ethnic clashes since April. Violence against women has also been on the rise, according to Talaigul Isakunova, an expert on gender issues who works with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The practice was famously parodied in the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, in which the main character kidnaps Pamela Anderson because he wants to marry her. This scene is a fictional, yet disturbingly accurate demonstration of the methodology behind bride stealing, except that it is even more prevalent in Kyrgyzstan than Kazakhstan.

Approximately one third of Kyrgyz women marry by means of non-consensual kidnapping, according to Russell Kleinbach, a sociology professor at Philadelphia University who has conducted extensive research into the custom of "kyz-ala kachuu," (or "grab and run") in Kyrgyzstan.

The rise in kidnapping in recent years is mainly economic.

"It's less expensive," said Kleinbach. People returned to kidnapping because Kyrgyzstan has faced severe economic problems in the last two decades, and many villagers have been able to avoid paying a generous "kalym," (bride price) dowry and providing plentiful wedding gifts by stealing a woman.

The other reason is social, Kleinbach says.

"It's an alternative for young men who were otherwise dependent on their parents to find them a bride," he said. "The tradition in Kyrgyzstan was for marriages to be arranged."

1 People in Kyrgyzstan often view bride kidnapping as an ethnic tradition, but studies show that this custom has evolved from a mutual decision into a rather violent incarnation. As a nomadic people, young Kyrgyz couples sometimes used to "elope" to avoid disapproval of their parents. But most Kyrgyz have since settled in villages and, according to Kleinbach, "if you are in a village, kidnapping doesn't really work well."

Kadyr Malikov, director of the Religion, Law and Policy research center in Bishkek said that while 80 percent of people in Kyrgyzstan are Muslim, the custom of kidnapping doesn't stem from Islam. "Kidnapping or marrying without agreement is a big sin in Islam," he said. "Islam tries to regulate the practice by only marrying couples who both agree with the wedding."

But girls like Munara are typically pressured to consent. Once she was brought into the house of the kidnapper, the matriarch of the family put a white scarf on her head, thereby proclaiming the couple married. The groom then went to the bride's parents' house, announced he kidnapped their daughter and offered kalym of approximately $700 in exchange for her.

Although Munara didn't want to marry him, her family accepted the price and forced her to stay, because bringing a kidnapped girl back into the family home would bring an unbearable stigma. It's generally assumed she'd no longer be a virgin and in a country where the "white sheet test" is still often used, nobody else would marry her.

Bubusara Ryskulova, director of the Sezim crisis center for women in Bishkek said many girls agree to live with the man who kidnapped them because they are shamed into it. "They are told from an early childhood to respect their elders and the elders are telling them to put the white scarf on their head,” she said. “It's very big psychological pressure.”

"If the girl doesn't agree, she might be raped, have a baby and now she really can't leave,” said Ryskulova. “And the men will sometimes say 'you never loved me anyway' which just gives them another excuse for more violence.”

But not all women are unhappy in these non-consensual marriages.

Bride kidnapping, also known as marriage by abduction or marriage by capture, is a practice throughout history and around the world in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry. Bride kidnapping still occurs in countries spanning Central Asia, the Caucasus region, and parts of Africa, and among peoples as diverse as the Hmong in southeast Asia, the Tzeltal in Mexico, and the Romani in Europe. In most countries, bride kidnapping is considered a sex crime, rather than a valid form of marriage. Some versions of it may also be seen as falling along the continuum between forced marriage and arranged marriage. The term is sometimes used to include not only abductions, but also elopements, in which a couple runs away together and seeks the consent of their parents later; these may be referred to as non-consensual and consensual abductions respectively. However, even when the practice is against the law, judicial enforcement remains lax, particularly in Kyrgyzstan, and Chechnya.

Bride kidnapping is distinguished from raptio in that the former refers to the abduction of one woman by one man (and his friends and relatives), and is still a widespread practice, whereas the latter refers to the large scale abduction of women by groups of men, possibly in a time of war. (See also war rape)

2 Some modern cultures maintain a symbolic kidnapping of the bride by the groom as part of the ritual and traditions surrounding a wedding, in a nod to the practice of bride kidnapping which may have figured in that culture's history. According to some sources, the honeymoon is a relic of marriage by capture, based on the practice of the husband going into hiding with his wife to avoid reprisals from her relatives, with the intention that the woman would be pregnant by the end of the month.[1]

Though the motivations behind bride kidnapping vary by region, the cultures with traditions of marriage by abduction are generally patriarchal with a strong social stigma on sex or pregnancy outside of marriage and illegitimate births.[2] In some cases, the couple collude together to elope under the guise of a bride kidnapping, presenting their parents with a fait accompli. In most cases, however, the men who resort to capturing a wife are often of lower social status, because of poverty, disease, poor character or criminality.[3] They are sometimes deterred from legitimately seeking a wife because of the payment the woman's family expects, the bride price (not to be confused with a dowry, paid by the woman's family).[4]

In agricultural and patriarchal societies, where bride kidnapping is most common, children work for their family. A woman leaves her birth family, geographically and economically, when she marries, becoming instead a member of the groom's family. (See patrilocality for an anthropological explanation.) Due to this loss of labor, the women's families do not want their daughters to marry young, and demand economic compensation (the aforementioned bride price) when they do leave them. This conflicts with the interests of men, who want to marry early, as marriage means an increase in social status, and the interests of the groom's family, who will gain another pair of hands for the family farm, business or home.[5] Depending on the legal system under which she lives, the consent of the woman may not be a factor in judging the validity of the marriage.

In addition to the issue of forced marriage, bride kidnapping may have other negative effects on the young women and their society. For example, fear of kidnap is cited as a reason for the lower participation of girls in the education system.[6]

The mechanism of marriage by abduction varies by location. This article surveys the phenomenon by region, drawing on common cultural factors for patterns, but noting country-level distinctions.