The lethal protests pitting Iraq’s main Shiite factions against each other have prompted the country’s Kurds to play peacemaker, a high-wire balancing act that looks increasingly hard to sustain in the face of Iraq’s unremitting dysfunction.

The violence erupted Monday when powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced that he was “retiring” from politics. This triggered a bloody confrontation between Iraqi security forces, including members of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Units, and his supporters who stormed the presidential palace. The fighting left at least 23 people dead.

The crisis — some said the country was on the brink of another full-blown civil war — showed signs of abating as Sadr called on his supporters to pull out of the Green Zone today. However, deepening tensions between Sadr, whose bloc won the most votes in last October’s elections, and the Iran-backed Coordination Framework alliance are unlikely to subside as the country struggles to form a new government nearly a year after elections were held.

Nechirvan Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, welcomed Sadr’s “responsible” stance in calling off the protestors while renewing his offer to bring together Iraqi political parties in Erbil to resolve their differences and start “a serious dialogue to resolve the current complicated situation in the country.”