Babakyar and delimitation: how Azerbaijan defended its strategic frontiers

News about the delimitation of the state border between Azerbaijan and Armenia is among the most anticipated. Six years have passed since the war, and to date, only 13 kilometers out of more than 1,000 kilometers of the border line have been delimited and demarcated. This means that the borders between the two states, which have been in a serious conflict for many years, remain in a provisional status.

At the same time, it is clear to everyone that the border, which was destroyed by Armenia along almost its entire length, cannot be restored quickly. Over the thirty years of the conflict, the Armenian side has encroached on the sovereign territories of Azerbaijan, and now these weeds will have to be uprooted, which will not always be a painless process. There is already positive experience in this regard. In April 2024, the demarcation took place on a 12.7-kilometer section of the state border after four villages of the Gazakh region were returned to Azerbaijan - Baganis Hayrim, Ashagi Askipara, Kheyrimli and Gyzylgajili. At the same time, the demarcation was carried out without delay. Both processes were going on almost in parallel. Azerbaijan did not give the Armenian side the opportunity to change its mind or slow down the process. Despite the agreements with official Yerevan, the revanchist opposition and the church did everything they could to hinder the liberation of the occupied Azerbaijani villages. The domestic political situation in Armenia deteriorated sharply and threatened to escalate into mass unrest. The opposition actively campaigned against the government’s decision, urging Armenians who had been living illegally in the seized villages for decades not to agree with it. To the credit of official Yerevan, it managed to handle the situation, and the delimitation process ended without serious incidents.

So, as of today, only 13 kilometers of the Azerbaijani?Armenian border can be considered non?contested. The societies of the two countries are waiting for the process to continue.

The day before, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said that the parties had reached an agreement on the direction in which the delimitation would continue. “There is an understanding that the work will begin in the more challenging northern section — from the point where the borders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia meet — and will move from north to south,” the minister told reporters.

Previously, two options were considered: the section announced by the head of the department and the section of the border in the south, from which the TRIPP utilities will run.

In Armenia, they do not rule out that the plans may change. Commenting on the statement made on Wednesday by the head of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, Sargis Khandanyan, head of the Armenian parliament’s foreign relations committee, said that the implementation of TRIPP may lead to changes in the schedule for the delimitation of the Armenian?Azerbaijani border. When the implementation of the “Trump Route” begins on the ground, there is a possibility that partial delimitation work will be carried out, for example, on those sections where a railway is supposed to run, or on the section where oil pipelines, gas pipelines, and power lines are to be laid. “That is, perhaps, I won’t say a deviation, but a certain change in logic regarding very local sections. But the overall logic is, of course, from north to south,” the parliamentarian noted.

If the peace agenda between the two countries continues to progress in the same vein as it does today, it is possible that the delimitation of borders will take place simultaneously in several areas. Since the construction of cross?border infrastructure without border delimitation is impossible.

Some believe that it has been decided to start the process in the north because there are not many problems there and the work will be easy. However, this is a mistaken view.

The point where the borders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia intersect (the triple junction) is located on the south?western slope of the Babakyr mountain range. This strategic height, according to the administrative-territorial division, is located in the area of the village of Ikindji Shikhly, Gazakh District, Azerbaijan. The closest village to the very point of the junction is the Georgian village of Tekali in Marneuli. At one time, communications from Azerbaijan to Armenia passed through this strategically important area. In particular, a railway and a gas pipeline. With the start of Armenian aggression, these communications were cut off.

During the conflict, the Armenian side repeatedly attempted to advance its positions towards the strategic Babakhar height. The only thing that prevented serious armed provocations was the fact that the border with Georgia also ran through this area. Dominating this height provided a complete operational and tactical advantage over the adjacent territories. The Azerbaijani armed forces have held the position on the hill since the early 1990s. Until December 2018, units of the Ministry of Defense were stationed along the border; then this section came under the control of the Border Service. In the summer of 2019, Azerbaijani border guards had to repel an attack by the Armenian armed forces, which were attempting to advance deeper into the border zone. In response, the State Border Service of Azerbaijan carried out a counter?operation and advanced its combat posts by 1.5–1.7 kilometres. Four new strategic heights on the Babakhar ridge were occupied. This allowed Azerbaijan to take full visual and fire control over critical infrastructure — the transit gas pipeline running from Georgia to Armenia and the gas distribution station. Additional security was also provided for the border Azerbaijani villages..

The safety of the border Azerbaijani villages was needed even in areas not adjacent to the occupation zone. There was an incident when, after Armenians fired on a wedding procession in one of the border villages, the residents turned to the military, and they took action — they took control of the enemy’s position from which the threat was coming. The same was done in 2019 in the direction of Babakyar, the point where the borders of three states meet. Although this place was far from the occupation zone, people also died there.

After the prevention of the Armenian attack and the advancement of Azerbaijani positions, the Armenian Ministry of Defense, as usual, issued a denial, stating through the department’s chief propagandist, Artsrun Hovhannisyan, that “the process of improving Armenian positions is ongoing, and this also applies to the Nakhchivan direction.” This statement amused the Azerbaijani side, because the reality was different: the actions of the army of the occupying country were monitored both visually and using special technical surveillance equipment.

It is clear that the Armenian side perceived the latest defeat in the border clashes as painful and nerve?wracking. The Armenian side did not want to admit the failure of its plans and tried to shift the problem onto Georgia and present what had happened as “Azerbaijan’s invasion of Georgian territory.” In November 2019, the British resource Bellingcat published an article with a corresponding headline. The fake was concocted based on a satellite image. Why are we not surprised? A certain journalist from the Armenian diaspora in Australia and some experts from Armenia launched a fake “investigation,” claiming that Azerbaijani border guards had allegedly occupied not Armenian positions, but Georgian territories — as much as 200 hectares. At the same time, for some reason, no protests were voiced by the Georgian side. But this fact did not bother the authors of the fake in the slightest.

Azerbaijan’s border outposts in the area marked on maps as Tripoint GE/AM/AZ are located on sovereign Azerbaijani territory. Meanwhile, sources on social media indicate that a little further south, in an undelimited section of the same zone, there is an Armenian position with one foot on Azerbaijani territory. If this is indeed the case, then Yerevan must be prepared to address this issue.

Meeting with voters at the end of May, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that there are two possible approaches to the issue of delimitation: “either the parties proceed from a confrontational logic and allow for the emergence of new crises in the future, or they decide to finally resolve historical disputes and establish the border in such a way that it does not create new grounds for tension.” According to the Armenian prime minister, the basic principle of delimitation is the borders of the former USSR and the Alma?Ata Declaration, “however, if a strict border line creates inconveniences for people’s lives, it may be adjusted as part of optimization.”

Azerbaijan is fully in favor, but with some clarifications.

There are no historical territorial disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan. There are territorial claims by Armenia against Azerbaijan, and this is a completely different level of the problem. Also, the issue of “inconvenience” is not relevant to the Azerbaijani population, because Azerbaijani villages do not extend beyond the borders of their country and will not experience any inconvenience from the delimitation. However, during the years of occupation, the Armenians moved their borders, their farms, their houses, their arable land, and their wells onto the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan. It goes without saying that the Armenian population may suffer losses, just as Armenian citizens suffered losses during the 2024 delimitation. The restoration of legitimate borders will continue to cause many of the very inconveniences that Pashinyan spoke about. Having grown accustomed over decades to the absence of borders, the residents of the Armenian borderlands complain to journalists and revanchists that they are very frightened by the Azerbaijani positions located two kilometers away. They say they can’t graze their sheep where they’re used to because the Azerbaijani people have “taken away” the pastures.

Should Baku take these inconveniences into account and move the border so that Armenian children won’t be afraid of seeing the Azerbaijani flag flying high?

It seems these questions don’t require an answer.