We borrowed some Egyptian AKs from the Special Forces armory for some cross training when I was in the 82nd Abn Div. They were pretty worn out and beat up, but they worked fine, until we got some bad ammo. A couple of the rifles would yank the rear of the case head completely off the case, leaving that portion in the chamber. When the bolt tried to chamber another round, it made "The Jam from Hell".
I'm still not sure if it was a bad chamber in two rifles, or a bad batch of ammo, but we WERE able to clear them and continue on with the training, by sticking a tight patch on a cleaning rod, and twisting it around in the chamber until the rough portion of the case caught in the patch material, and we could withdraw the remnants. That took too long for comfort, but it worked.
It sure says a lot about AK extractors, that they could pull a case head off the case and keep right on working. Those things shot like crap, but they weren't match rifles anyway.
All told, I think I'd rather have an M16, though, I like to hit what I aim at.