Jinan is in her late 30s. She wears boot cut jeans with lace flowers snaking up the right leg. Her top is a tight fitting pastel yellow and her chestnut brown hair flows just past her shoulder.

The devout Shiite Muslim prays five times a day and fasts during the holy month of Ramadan to focus on God and sacrifice. She was born and raised in the southern port city of Basra.

The city was once reveled for its beauty and active role in culture, music and dance. Now it is dilapidated, devastated from war after war after war. Giant lakes of sewage tarnish the city and the infrastructure is collapsing after an eight-year war with Iran, years of neglect and sanctions and the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Following the invasion extrene Islamists slowly took control of the city. They firebombed music stores, forbade music at Muslim weddings when couples celebrated their matrimony. Slowly they controlled people's behavior and took away the choice Muslim women make to cover their hair out of modesty.

Jinan's choice was stolen, but she refused to succumb. The engineer went to work every day in her snug clothes, meticulous makeup and flowing hair. Every day she prayed to God as well.

Signs near the police station warned women to veil and to remove their makeup. Women around her were being killed. In just five months more than 50 women were killed, police said.

She returned home at the same time as she did every day a little over three months ago. As she walked to the door she felt cold metal pressed to her head.

"If you don't wear anything on your head then we will kill you and anyone with you," a man whispered in her ear as he held a gun to her head. She felt fear and then rage.   

Jinan wouldn't surrender her right to decide and she went out again with her hair uncovered, she said recently, her gold bracelets jingling and her dangling earrings swaying.

"There is an inner feeling that told me no one could threaten me," she said. "No one could tell me to do this thing and not that."

Then the Iraqi Security Forces descended upon the city in late March. She thought it was futile. She had no faith in Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Once again she thought this would fail.

But now things seem to be getting better. She leaves her house without the terror and she hopes that the Islamists will stay in hiding and the threatening banners torn from the walls will never again be hung.

"Before when I moved in the streets I heard the whispers about my clothes," she said. People would admonish her.

"They will kill you," she recalled people saying. Now no one says a word about her white high heels, her toes painted pink or her red lipstick. One woman clapped her hands in approval.

"Last week I went to work and a police man gave me a thumbs-up," Haiya, her sister added. She also won't be forced to cover her hair. For the first time her defiance was met with approval.

Her anger isn't just directed at the extremists that ruled her streets for years. For a month now it has been better. It's also directed against the United States and the British.

"We all say the reason for this suffering is the English and the Americans," she said. "They didn't use powerful actions. They left us with the militias...When Saddam fell we were all very very happy but the British and Americans killed our happiness."

They now feel safer now but they wouldn't let a journalist take their picture. They worried that the people they feared would come back. 

"Five years of our life were ruled by guns," Haiya said. "They hijacked our religion. They might come back."