MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Her face is soft and round, cocooned in a loose blue cotton hijab. Her eyes, black onyx full of mystery.

But Maryam Mohammed covers her smile with hennaed fingers, casts her gaze downward, a picture of shy anxiety -- not the image of someone who has done the most dangerous job in one of the most dangerous cities on Earth.

Until recently, Ms. Mohammed was one of many women making the daily khat run, braving a gantlet of gunmen on the airport road to meet small planes crammed with the highly addictive narcotic leaf so they could bring it to market.

"I was feeling proud of myself," said Ms. Mohammed, 20, "and I felt brave that I was risking my life for my family."

For 15 years, Somalia was ruled by clan-based strongmen, each with his own private army. The capital was divided among the warlords and controlled by their AK-47-toting fighters, many of them children.

Over that period of chaos, violence and war, the women of Mogadishu have risked their lives time and again -- and in the process changed their country.

First they became the wartime breadwinners in this male-dominated society.

"Women had to help the family to survive. That's when they got their voice, when they shared the life of the family with the men," said Malyun Sheik Haidar, 31, who publishes a women's newspaper.

This spring, women stepped up again. Weary of suffering stoically, they jammed the switchboards of Mogadishu's independent radio stations with angry protests about the warlords' violence.

It marked a stunning shift in Somali culture. People here call it a popular revolution that helped defeat the warlords and ushered in the reign of the Conservative Council of Islamic Courts.

But now that women have helped end the brutal power of the warlords, they may be forced to abandon their newfound status.

Already women are swapping traditional Somali dress, which is open at the face, for the Saudi-style black hijab, which covers the face and body.

As the family breadwinner, Ms. Mohammed was a part of the economic revolution, but she was too preoccupied with the raw business of survival to worry about the political revolution of recent months.

Like many young people raised in the warlord era, she has little education, just three years of school, because her father couldn't afford to send her to private school. There was no government, thus no government-provided schools, hospitals, police, water, electricity or sanitation.

Her brother, a militiaman for warlord Muse Side Yalahow, taught her how to fire an AK-47. After he was killed in a fight more than a year ago, she approached local women for advice on how to trade khat. She ended up on the airport run.

"I was trembling. I knew the militias could attack us at any moment and kill me and steal the khat. But the problem of our daily survival drove me to do it," said Ms. Mohammed, who made $2.50 a day.

Before the warlords' defeat, militias and freelance gunmen were some of the most regular khat customers, but they did not always pay.

Sometimes they'd shoot khat sellers in the market or ambush them on the road. In one such ambush, Ms. Mohammed's friend was shot and killed beside her.

Nine months ago, Ms. Mohammed, under pressure from her family, quit the dangerous trade. She joined a militia, thinking it would be safer, but three months later she found herself in the recent battles for Mogadishu.

"I don't like to kill people. I don't like to fight. In battle, you die or kill," she said. "I was very frightened in battle, but I had to do it for the money."

Like many women in Mogadishu, she feels less vulnerable to violence nowadays, but she is afraid it will be harder to find work under the Islamic regime.

"I don't see them as something good," she said. "I'd like to leave Somalia if I can and do business, have a small shop or even a job with a decent salary, like a secretary or a cleaner."

Anab Mohammed Isaaq, 35, has five children ranging in age from 7 months to 10 years. She wears a white band on her head to signify mourning for her husband, who was killed by a stray bullet in the Mogadishu fighting. She supports the family by selling clothes in the market, earning 50 cents to a dollar a day.

She has lived in fear for her two daughters, Nasteexo, 10, and Hamsa, 7. In her neighborhood of metal shacks, militias armed with machetes have come at night and hacked through walls, stealing girls. A neighbor's 4-year-old was kidnapped, raped and killed.

"The problems are all on women. That's why they were complaining and talking to the media," she said.

Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic courts won popular support in the mid-1990s by trying to enforce a degree of order, reducing theft and crime. When the courts' militias recently drove the warlords from Mogadishu, they had the support of the majority.

The courts represent various strands of Islam, some more fundamentalist than others, but there are fears that the recent rise of Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys as chairman of the group could mean more repressive, Taliban-style rules. Aweys took over from the more moderate Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, who is now chairman of the group's executive committee.

Ms. Haidar, 31, the women's newspaper publisher, was recently warned by a figure in the courts to give up working and stay home.

"If this continues, it will close down my newspaper," she said. "This is our only expression. We are talking about children's rights and women's rights, and if they stop us from doing that, it means we lost our rights."

Even under the more moderate leadership, Islamic guards had been stopping minibuses to check women's clothing and men's hairstyles.

Islamic guards grabbed Ismahaan Ali Mohammed, 18, an aspiring actress, and hacked her clothing with scissors because it was deemed too tight and un-Islamic.

Wearing heavy eyeliner that exaggerates her beauty, she and her friend, Nawaal Mohammed, 18, could not be more different from Maryam Mohammed, the former khat trader. They are self-confident, assertive and eager to soak up the pleasures of youth. But these days they must cover their bright dresses with the hijab.

Nawaal Mohammed has two boyfriends and used to wander the streets holding hands with the favorite of the moment. They went to the movies. She even kissed them secretly, in their houses or hers.

"Now I'm afraid to be arrested or beaten," she said. "It's safer than before, but we have no freedom. We are not happy with this Islamic Sharia law."

She dreads donning a drab hijab before leaving the house.

"It's hot. It's too heavy. If I wear hijab, I don't feel pretty," she said. "I feel that I don't have any freedom."

Nawal Mohammed likes to wear tight jeans and chafes under the new restrictions.

"I used to wear pants and a shirt. It's my style. I felt good. It made me feel beautiful."