That's fine because AK's don't need to be field stripped.
The Russian AK manual says that in harsh conditions, you should keep it buttoned up, run it wet, reapply oil often through the magazine well and ejection port, and clean it every chance you get.
An AK with enough crap in the receiver will fail, and while the safety/dust cover does a fairly good job keeping the big stuff out, there are still holes where sand and grit can get in.
"...the "AK's aren't accurate" type of comments..." They aren't. Never designed to be either. They were designed to be issued to illiterate conscripts who could be trained to use 'em in as short a period as possible. Accuracy isn't necessary. 100% reliability is necessary.
The Russians built the AKM and its derivatives for a very literate First World fighting force, namely their own. These are the same people who built some of the best fighter aircraft of World War 2, built the first ICBM, and put the first person in space. Their economic system was backward and inefficient for idealogical reasons, not from lack of education; the New Soviet Man may have been poor by Western standards, and often politically oppressed, but illiterate he was not.
The fact that the AK has been widely adopted across the Third World since then is a testament to its reliability under harsh conditions and ease of operation/maintenance, yes, but also because the Soviets handed them out to client states to gain influence and favor with those governments. But that's not what it was originally designed for.
As to accuracy, the default sight setting for a 7.62x39mm AKM is for a 300 meter zero, so the designers at least
intended it to be useful to 300 meters and beyond. Keep in mind that marksmanship standards of Iraqi insurgents and Somali fighters are not typically those of a professional First World army. An AK is an easy rifle to shoot badly, but can be shot well.
Between the SKS and the AK, which is generally more accurate?
In my experience, shooting iron sights, the SKS is more accurate due to the longer sight radius. An AK wearing an optic will outshoot an iron-sights SKS in most people's hands, though (certainly in mine). You have a lot more options for mounting an optic on an AK, in my experience; you can fit an SKS with a red dot or low-power pistol scope on an Ultimak forward rail, if you so chose, but an AK can mount optics over the receiver as well (either on the siderail or with a Krebs-type rail).
