Within months of Aung San's assassination, on 4 January 1948, the last British soldiers left Burma and it became an independent country. By August 1948 a civil war began between the Burmese military and many independent regional groups, including both Communist insurgents and various ethnic militias. The internal conflict within Myanmar continues to the present day, the oldest civil war in the world. Since Burma's independence no single government has ever controlled the entirety of Burma, no election has ever represented every area claimed by the Burmese government, and no census recording the entire population of Burma has ever been able to be conducted.