After years of being afraid of death threats from Islamic extremists who warned them to stop driving cars, give up makeup and cover their hair in public, Iraqi women are taking back the roads.

The Washington Post reports that women in the war-torn nation – particularly in Baghdad, where there are no more violent militias and very few car bombings — are carefully reclaiming freedoms denied them for so long. Driving a car is a freedom many of them missed; many had to depend on their fathers or brothers to drive them around, or take buses or taxis.

“A car driven by a woman was like a goat chased by wolves,” Samira Hussein, a 36-year-old mother of four, recently said. “The gangs who kidnapped and carjacked [citizens] were running everything.”

Although driving licenses haven’t been issued since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, women are turning out at driving schools like al-Riyadh Driving School in droves; there’s been a 70-percent increase this year in comparison to recent years at al-Riyadh alone.

"I want to be independent,” 25-year-old college student Hadeel Ahmed, clothed in jeans, told the Post after finishing a class at al-Riyadh Driving School. "Driving means someone is brave … They’re strong. Not only in their body but in their spirit."

It’s not that Iraqi women were ever legally barred from driving. In fact, they used to be all over the roads. Believe it or not, under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was pretty secular. Women went to college, played sports and had some legal protections in marriage, divorce and inheritance – a stark contrast to women in other Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

But that was before death squads and kidnappers took over the streets, and Islamic extremists threw acid in the faces of women who went out without their faces covered. Even if they knew how to drive, women would choose to stay home out of fear. But now, changes are happening for the better – including the emergence of satellite TV, cell phones and the Internet.

But, unfortunately, women’s freedoms aren’t a given throughout Iraq. In Iraq’s second-largest city – Basra – for example, women still don’t drive out of fear of being killed or kidnapped.

"I can count them on my fingers,” Lt. Abdel Hassan Jawad, a spokesman for the Basra traffic police, said when asked about female drivers in that city.

Here’s hoping progress comes to Basra, and other Iraqi cities where women and their families still live in fear of walking outside their homes.