Everyone was invited to the party — except the boss!
Notorious Taliban leader Mullah Omar was not invited by newly elected Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani to join proposed peace talks with the half-blind heavy’s fundamentalist group, The Post has learned.
“The new president of Afghanistan invited the Taliban. We didn’t invite Mullah Omar. He’s on the terrorist watch list,” the UN’s Afghanistan ambassador, Dr. Zahir Tanin, told The Post.
During his inaugural speech Monday, Ghani called for peace talks with the Taliban and another militant group, Hezb-e-Islami, after 13 years of war.
“We ask opponents of the government, especially the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami, to enter political talks,” Ghani said. “Any problems that they have, they should tell us, we will find a solution.”
But the Taliban are refusing to come to the table — for now.
“The Taliban are renouncing our peace offer,” Tanin said. “We need to work with our neighbors [in the region] to see whether the Taliban will be ready to join us at some point.”
Since Sept. 11, 2001, Omar — who lost an eye during combat with the Soviet Union in the late 1970s-’80s Afghan War — has been in hiding with a $10 million bounty on his head from the US State Department.
But the cloaked chieftain is still believed to be directing the Taliban insurgency within Afghanistan from his hiding place.
“He should be in Pakistan,” Tanin noted.
Before 9/11, Omar befriended Osama bin Laden and allowed the now-deceased al Qaeda leader to set up terrorist training camps while the Taliban held Afghanistan in a stranglehold.
The Taliban lost control of Afghanistan during the 2001 American invasion and have been trying to regain power ever since.
In recent weeks, Taliban insurgents have ramped up their attacks with “foreign fighters” from other countries in the region, such as Pakistan, according to Tanin.
The savage attacks against Afghan civilians, police and government posts mirrored the beheadings by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Tanin said.
Media reports have suggested that the foreign fighters working with the Taliban, who have already slaughtered dozens of people, are really ISIS militants.
“I cannot say if they are affiliated or not [with ISIS] or whether ISIS is trying to create a new front in Afghanistan,” Tanin said. “But there is a sharp increase of foreign fighters committing the same brutal acts.”
Tanin said beheadings are nothing new to Afghanistan, pointing out that the Taliban “chose the same brutalities in the ’90s.”
The UN ambassador also touched on Ghani’s security deal with the United States to keep 9,800 American soldiers in Afghanistan beyond this year.
Both countries signed the bilateral agreement Tuesday.
“The Afghanistan army still needs assistance and training that we would like to have in place,” Tanin said. “The rule is very clear [for the American soldiers]: to train and support and assist in this war.”
Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused to sign the security pact with the US.