section_path: Local governance strategy
section_name: Local governance strategy
paragraph_text: Local governance strategy
  
  In territories it holds, al-Shabaab typically maintains "limited but effective" administrative control over resident populations, providing services – such as dispute resolution through Sharia-based courts – which are sometimes compared favourably to those offered in government-held territories. Somalis have been observed to travel out of government-controlled areas into al-Shabaab territory to settle disputes, particularly involving clan dynamics, lacking trust in official institutions. Al-Shabaab claimed some credit for Somalia's excellent crop yield in early 2010, saying that Somali grain production had flourished due to al-Shabaab's reduction of food imports, and that the policy had redistributed income to poor, rural Somali farmers. However, the group has also allegedly committed widespread human rights abuses against populations in its territories, including through a brutal interpretation and application of Islamic jurisprudence on hudud.