Gillian Gibbons’s son John probably summed up the Mohamed teddy bear crisis best when he remarked that it had been “a strange old week” for his family.

One moment his mother was under arrest, facing 40 lashes, with a Khartoum mob baying for her blood; the next, she received a presidential pardon and was being escorted home by two Muslim peers.

The reversal of fortune would be extraordinary were the saga not set in Sudan, one of the world’s most dysfunctional and unpredictable states.

Under the rule of President Omar al-Bashir, who seized power in a military coup nearly two decades ago, the regime is struggling to keep Africa’s biggest country together. A state the size of Western Europe faces a bloody rebellion in western Darfur province, a new separatist threat by the Christian south and fresh breakaway movements in the east.

To maintain his grip on power, President al-Bashir needs constantly to rally support among his followers, drawn from the ranks of the security forces and from the Islamic establishment. One of the main perceived threats comes from the West; not least Britain, the former colonial power that has been highly critical of Khartoum’s handling of the situation in Darfur.

Mrs Gibbons stumbled into this volatile political mix –and the timing could not have been worse. The regime is feeling extremely vulnerable about outside interference and particularly the deployment in the new year of a 20,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force.

The regime’s supporters in Khartoum quickly seized on the teddy bear incident in the hope of rallying support at home and abroad. In the past Sudan has been able to rely on solid backing from the Arab and Muslim world, even at the height of the atrocities committed by its forces against Darfur civilians. This time, however, there was no such support.

The Sudanese Government was increasingly embarrassed by the situation and President al-Bashir was probably relieved to be able set Mrs Gibbons free.

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