Violent clashes between rival factions within Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim community left 23 people dead and almost 400 wounded this week. The mayhem ended abruptly when powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to withdraw from locations they'd occupied in Baghdad and elsewhere, and to go home.

But while al-Sadr's command defused the deadly standoff between his backers and rival Shiite factions considered allies, if not proxies, of neighboring Iran, the underlying rift remains. Iraqis know that if it's not mended, the violence could easily erupt again, and escalate into a wider conflict.It was a terrifying 24 hours, we could hear bullets hitting walls and cars around our apartment," Ahmad Abdullah told CBS News. Abdulla, 36, lives with his wife and two daughters less than a mile from the heavily fortified "Green Zone" in Baghdad, where much of the government is based and which is often the focal point of unrest.He compared the situation to the civil war that tore Iraq apart between 2003, when the U.S. invaded to topple Saddam Hussein, and 2008.The clashes didn't take many Iraqis by surprise. The country has been mired in political turbulence since the last national elections in October 2021.

Al-Sadr's nationalist political movement, which opposes both Iran's and the West's influence in Iraq, won the most parliamentary seats in the voting, securing 73 of the total 329.

But they fell short of the two-thirds majority of seats required to form a new government unilaterally. Al-Sadr and his senior aides refused to negotiate a power-sharing unity government with the rival "Coordination Framework," an alliance of mostly Iran-aligned Shiite parties.

Al-Sadr dismissed the Framework's politicians as corrupt proxies of Iran. But without cooperation from its factions — including the State of Law parliamentary bloc led by two-term former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — al-Sadr couldn't form a new government.

Iraq has been run by a "caretaker government" since 2020, even before the elections last year failed to establish a new administration.Al-Sadr tried many times to form a government, but with the deadlock persisting, in June he told all 73 of his bloc's Members of Parliament to resign in protest. He gave his supporters a green light to occupy the parliament and block the next session of the legislature, and then said the parliament should be dissolved and new elections held.On Monday, al-Sadr went a step further and announced his resignation from politics — not for the first time. His followers took it as a battle cry, marching from the parliament they'd occupied for days toward other governmental buildings, including a presidential palace that hosts meetings for heads of state and foreign dignitaries.They kept marching toward houses and offices of al-Sadr's rivals, and that's when it got ugly.